


I Need You So Much Closer

by stele3



Series: Teatime [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canon-Compliant, M/M, Sorta character death, it's Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Jack and Ianto's relationship over the course of series 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Need You So Much Closer

The first time, he gets so drunk that he doesn't remember. Curses himself for it later, furious, convinced it'll only happen once, that Jack would only – just the once.

It's just after those psychotic country cannibals, when Ianto had knelt in a place of death and waited for the cut. Not fighting anymore, never really fighting except at first, to get Tosh out. Lisa was still a heavy weight, pulling him down; Ianto didn't _want_ to get torn to shreds and served up as bloody kebab, but it – he. Well.

Those corpses that Suzie had brought back, they'd all said that there was nothing out there. Only blackness, nothingness. Ianto was okay with becoming nothing. Best not to expect things, then you're never disappointed; he'd practiced that it his whole life, transforming himself into negative space, polite, deferential, contained. He'd gathered his hurts close with a kind of perverse pride, smothering himself in them and always so _pleased_ with himself for never showing how much it hurt, so pleased until he felt like screaming.

That man, that squint-eyed leader, he'd picked up the stained butcher knife and Ianto had been afraid, yes, but also – peaceful. More calm than he should have been, with horrible death just a few inches away.

Jack had been less accepting of the situation, if his tractor-and-shotgun rampage was any indication.

Afterwards, they'd all gotten absolutely smashed; seemed like the right and proper thing to do after almost becoming a buffet. Ianto's pretty sure that's when this vaguely repulsive train wreck between Gwen and Owen first chugged away from the station, and that's about all the train metaphors he can handle in reference to that topic.

Of course, he's no better. Wakes up – _alone_ , don't forget that part – a little sore in all the right places, bruises on his neck and shoulders, and doesn't remember a thing. Almost puts his fist into the bathroom mirror when he realizes that his rumpled – _empty_ – bed smells like Jack.

Not a word of it at work, of course. Of course. Jack sends him one quick, questioning look, and then it's on to the strange old bits of space rubbish that someone's dug up.

Ianto has mental shelves; he puts this whole moment on the back of a dusty one, hopes never to have to look at it again. He takes care not to go out drinking with the gang… which he never did, anyway, just that once. Because of the demented cannibals, and the wide-open way Jack had looked down at him while Ianto had been trussed up and kneeling. 

Just that once.

-o-

The second time, Jack's just walked away from Toshiko, who'd been _reading their bloody minds_ for a week.

Ianto is amazed and so _proud_ that his hand doesn't wobble when he takes down her testimony about the alien creature she'd taken to bed (he occasionally wonders what kind of viruses extraterrestrials might have – at this rate, he'll get some up-close and personal case studies from his coworkers). All he wants to do is run screaming away from her: it terrifies him to imagine that she can hear it all, all his ugliness and failures as a human being laid out for her to see.

Jack takes her out to sit underneath the water tower. She makes her confession and Jack leaves her there to contemplate the nature of Fate or some such bloody nonsense. Ianto, he files the paperwork and goes to reception, where he finally lets his hands shake like they want to.

The door opens and he flinches, ducks for the beaded curtain. "Ianto?" Jack's voice calls, and Ianto's stomach does that awful, stupid drop that he wishes it wouldn't. There's no point to it and he hates pointless things.

Open a dictionary, look up the word 'futile,' and there was his own damned picture.

"In here," he calls back, fingers twitching for something to do. He adjusts some books on the shelf, a few Romantics, some Shakespeare; he's always been a closet bookworm, something Owen teased him about until he learned to hide any sign of thoughtfulness or intelligence among these geniuses. Anyone with an IQ level below 140 doesn't get to show signs of thought; Gwen does, but she's Gwen and somehow more _human_ that the rest of them.

Jack pushes through the curtain, rattling the beads against the walls. "Have you already filed her statements? I'd like to have a look at them if you haven't already."

Ah. A task. Ianto's stomach settles a little. "Yes sir, but I made a complete copy. It's on your desk. Along with a warm cup of Arabian Mocha Java," he adds with a smile. 

Jack laughs, big smile that crinkles the fine skin at the corners of his eyes. "You know, Ianto, I think you must have a bit of low-grade telepathy."

"What? Oh, no, sir not me. Just a good teaboy, is all."

"Yes, you are." Jack leans against the wall, smile still lingering. There's a look about him, the way he watches Ianto's face… it's almost – speculative. Sizing him up. Ianto wishes to God that he wouldn't, it makes his skin hot and a little tingly.

He imagines, sometimes, that he can remember details of That Night, but it's all a haze of shots and staring across the table at Jack's ear. Which is laughable, because there are much _better_ parts of Jack to be staring at, but Ianto doesn't feel like laughing. He wants Jack to go away and leave him be: there's work to be done if he can just find it, keep himself occupied. He's good at that.

It doesn't stop him from tormenting himself just a little, because sometimes that feels good, too. He imagines that they must have kissed at the pub, then taken a taxi back to Ianto's flat – which meant that Jack had seen his cardboard-box furniture and the stacks of books piled in random locations like some kind of ancient civilization's monuments to their God. (Mentally, Ianto alters the memory to sweep up a bit before they actually get home.) Jack would have peeled off his clothes, his tie, his jacket, all those little items of cloth that Ianto keeps so neat, and they would have tumbled back onto his creaky bed, and –

His mind fails him there, of course. Ianto's never been with a man, never even _wanted_ to be with a man.

His ears feel hot. He doesn't look at Jack, just slips a tome of Coleridge towards the back of the shelf. That woman Toshiko brought in had recited a bit of _Kublai Khan_ , and now he won't be able to read it without imagining a knife at the soft skin of Toshiko's throat. It must be human nature to care about one another like this, to feel this fierce burn of protection towards the people he works with – or maybe he's alone in that. Maybe the others don't feel that way about him; after everything that happened with Lisa, he couldn't blame them.

A warm hand settles on his shoulder blade and Ianto freezes up with one finger rested against the spine of _Don Juan_.

"Wild fellow, that Lord Byron," Jack says beside him. He stretches one long finger to tap the book, just below Ianto's hand. "Liked his rich widows and young men."

Ianto smiles at the note in his voice. "I take it you would have liked him."

"I did, yes. Very much."

Ianto waits a moment then steals a look out of the corner of his eye. Jack says things like that sometimes… just little things, murmurs almost to himself, about distant worlds and distant times that it's impossible for him to know about. It seems completely involuntary, but he doesn't do it in front of the others – which kicks Ianto's heart rate up a few notches. Jack regards the book with a faint half-smile, lost inside some inner thought. In moments like this, he seems so terribly far away; it makes Ianto ache, but it also makes it easier for him to watch Jack without himself being seen.

Then Jack turns his head and meets Ianto's gaze, and he can't help but look away. _Futility, thy name is Ianto Jones_.

"Do you want to hear a secret?" Jack asks him, humor and sadness curling the edges of his voice.

They both have their hands on the book. Ianto looks at Jack's and says, "Only if it doesn't involve Gwen and Owen's sex life." He wonders if Tosh told Jack everything she heard in everyone's heads. If he knows something now that's making him move his fingers over Ianto's back.

"Oh, you heard about that one, did you?"

"Yes. Unfortunately."

Jack chuckles again, and Ianto fights to stay still, looks for that numb, centered calmness that gets him through every day. "No, it's not about them. It's about me. I actually met Lord Byron once."

Ianto blinks, stares at Jack. He looks back steadily and lets Ianto search him. "Do you believe me?" he asks at last.

"I suppose I do." Why not? They have a pterodactyl in the roof.

That earns him a long, slow smile, and then Jack slides his hand to catch Ianto's. He pulls it away from the book and intertwines their fingers in such a strangely _intimate_ way, then bends his head. His lips brush Ianto's knuckles and Jack murmurs, "Thank you."

How either one of them can hear anything over Ianto's heartbeat, he doesn't know; he still pulls himself together well enough to joke, "Quite the proper gentleman, you." It doesn't really come out as humorous, though, more breathy and stupidly _admiring_.

Jack grins. "No, I'm not."

Then he proves it by pushing Ianto back against the bookshelves and kissing him, slow and deep and careful, with his hands on Ianto's neck and jaw.

Ianto reaches behind him to curl his fingers on a shelf, and holds on.

-o-

The third time, Ianto reaches first. After Suzie dies (again), Jack looks so distant, so weary and aloof, that Ianto wonders if one day he'll head off into the corners of his mind and never come back.

So he screws up his courage and says, "I've still got that stopwatch."

They almost break the damn thing, and on Jack's narrow cot – doesn't even have a proper home, and aren't they a pair? – Ianto really finds out what it's like to make love with a man. The jut of hip bones, wide hands on his shoulders, a hard cock sliding against his own… unfamiliar pressure and the rasp of stubble against his skin. It's strange and wonderful and he grasps it to him, suddenly so terrified and certain this will slip away that Jack props himself up on his elbows to hold Ianto's face between his hands. Jack doesn't say anything, but kisses his mouth a dozen times, until Ianto has stopped shaking himself apart. 

He doesn't sleep, Ianto's discovered. Jack will lie with him all night, curved into each other like a pair of commas, but he never sleeps. It's another thing, another piece of the puzzle that Ianto isn't bothering to put together. He doesn't care to solve the mystery of Jack; he's not like Tosh and her need for categories, or Owen with his suspiciousness. He doesn't even have Gwen's basic curiosity.

Jack stays with him all night, lets them lie wrapped up in each other in a loose sprawl of limbs curled and cheeks rested on shoulders, in Jack's cot and Ianto's bed (he did finally get around to sweeping, though the book are still there). That's good enough for Ianto.

-o-

Owen throws it in his face over the rift. Spits about his sad wet dreams and being Jack's part-time shag; it surprises Ianto more than it makes him angry, though. He'd thought he was invisible to all of them… maybe even to Jack.

Realizing that he's not, that he's _visible_ , is what gives him enough strength to pull the trigger.

He's right, in the end, for all the good that it does them; the rift tears holes, massive, gaping wounds through which old griefs slip to poison them again, drive them mad. Ianto shoots Owen and then Owen shoots Jack and they have to undo it; they have to undo all of it, bring everyone back, and set everything right.

Deep down, though, Ianto's not surprised. He's seen the others, Gwen with her boyfriend, Tosh with her alien-woman, Owen with that pilot lady. 

He's wrong, in the end; they're all wrong. Jack comes back all on his own, after they've all deserted him. Comes barreling in like he did with those psychotic cannibals, except instead of laying waste to everything, he saves the bloody world. Saves it just by being _him_ , by standing out in a field and giving away everything he has, all those strange, beautiful mysteries laid bare in strangled screams of pain.

This time, when he comes back, there's time. There's time to speak and be heard, and Ianto doesn't take it. Lets Jack pull him into a hug and forgive him, when there's no chance, no way Ianto can possibly forgive himself, or any of them. They'd doubted him, _killed_ him, taken that wonderful mystery of Byron and the WWII-era jacket, and torn it all to shreds for nothing.

So it doesn't surprise him at all when Jack disappears. He's forgiven them, made amends, but that doesn't mean… well. Best not to expect things, then you're never disappointed.


End file.
